10% social, 90% hope

That’s what the average online marketing strategy consists of. Hope is a powerful driver in many choices we make throughout our lives. Some consider hope the most powerful word ever expressed as it has driven mankind throughout all obstacles in our evolution. To have a bit of hope in business is quite normal, but to make it a strategy is simply hopeless.

A survey of several thousand Small Business indicated small-business owners overwhelmingly believe social media marketing is ineffective. Over 60% citing little-to-no ROI while some business owners said they will not use social media advertising again. Unfortunately, online marketing service providers will overstate quite a bit about the potential of social forum marketing.

When it comes to traditional online marketing business owners rarely see the results they hoped for. Marketing professionals will tell them this is due to poor ad copy, poor landing pages, targeting the wrong audience, and not enough time into the campaign. Social media is about real-time results. If it’s not working out of the gate, there’s a high probability it’s not going to work at all.

David Raine, founder of ailign.com, tells us most marketing professionals substantially fail at social media marketing and, in fact, get 99% their own clients offline opposed to utilizing the very services their trying to sell you. “It wouldn’t be smart to buy SEO services from a company that is ranked 2000 for the keyword SEO, so why would you buy social media marketing services from a company that doesn’t use it for their own marketing.”

Most campaigns that fail have one thing almost always in common, their approach is too broad. An honest social media professional would tell you that taking on social media marketing both conservatively and with accountability is the best plan for success. This gradual approach will provide the necessary result feedback needed to apply focus to your online marketing efforts. If your product offering is too broad it’s extremely difficult to measure what is or isn’t working. By focusing on a specific demographic that is further defined by interests and behaviors you can significantly reduce your marketing budget while providing immediate results to qualify your efforts.

If you were only given 3 seconds, the average view time of a social post, to make an intro about your product in a do or die scenario here’s what you would do;

Make sure the customer was interested in your topic of choice

Make sure the customer was qualified to buy

Make sure you knew in advance what the best possible use of your product would be to solve the customer’s problem

Certainly, anyone with this advantage should be able to make a good 3 second pitch to buy more time to get to the close. Knowing the points above can make just 3 seconds very powerful if you know what to say. Micro Social is a method to make every 3 seconds count online.

Micro Social is about targeting specific venues that cater to your target market, then listening to the conversations taking place in real-time. Opposed to posting generically and hoping for the best Micro Social is about both about target positioning and knowing when to pull the trigger.

Good campaigns are a result of good planning

Be specific about just one product/service value offering. Start with your highest demand service.

Be specific about who you are targeting – who is your perfect buyer for that one specific product/service?

Pick social media venues that are specific to your target market’s demographics, interests and behaviors.

Have a solid call to action. The landing page should be simple, direct to the point, and reinforce the content that drove its traffic. Remember your traffic is already qualified, you don’t need to oversell. They’ve already clicked, it’s now time to close the sale on the landing page.